Saturday, February 25, 2017

Top 5 searches leading to warning.or.kr

According to Amazon's internet stats source Alexa, the warning page you get when you try to access illegal content from within Korea is the 37th most popular page in the country.

If you're unfamiliar, the infamous warning page is a redirect that seems to occur at the ISP level* when you try to visit sites that host illegal content. For example: porn sites that don't require an adult ID check, gambling sites, online pharmacies, some pirating sites, etc. Try as you might, visiting a blacklisted URL ends up at http://warning.or.kr/ unless you're savvy enough to understand VPNs.

warning.or.kr screenshot

Now I don't usually trust foreign internet stats regarding Korea. I've mentioned some of the discrepancies before (like here or here or here). But one piece of data from Alexa's report was so funny, and so believable, that it won me over:

That says it all right there. Who is searching for porn, gambling, and illicit Viagra? Men. OK Alexa, I am convinced. You know your stuff.

The report also includes the top 5 keywords that ultimately lead people to the warning.

Top Keywords from Search Engines leading to warning.or.kr. Image: Alexa

Here's that data in text form:

Keyword and Percent of Search Traffic

야설 69.93%

warning.or.kr 24.67%

야동 1.43%

asian sex 1.38%

조대간호사 0.61%

For those wanting to know:

야설 is erotic fiction. I won't be childish enough to make a joke about this being at 69 percent.

Somethings obviously wrong in the data for #2

야동 is porn videos. Well, I'd guess this 야 is really 夜, so yaseol and yadong are really "night novels" and "nocturnal videos" which sounds even more pornographic than just saying "porn." But I'm no Hanja expert.

-----*It seems ISP-based, since certain sites will be accessible from one telecom's network but not another's, and vice-versa. A good example is 4chan, which seems to fluctuate between blocked/unblocked depending on the month and the ISP.